IDC and BSE listed media company Cybermedia are parting ways after 23 years of providing Telecom and information and communication technology (ICT) research in India. IDC will start a wholly owned India research business unit at Bangalore in this quarter, hiring research, consulting, management, sales, and support staff as part of its expansion. The unit will take over the functioning of "IDC India" from CyberMedia on February 28, 2011. Competing with IDC India, CyberMedia will launch CyberMedia Research from March 1, 2011 and expand its portfolio beyond ICT to also include Entrepreneurship (related to its magazine Dare) and Bio-Technology research practice. The unit will be headed by Thomas George, the Country Business Head and Vice President of IDC India, who has been associated with CyberMedia for the last 14 years. It will have 50 team members on board to start with, and expects to double that in the next two years. The research business, Cybermedia says in a statement, has two mega studies on Technology Business Incubation Units and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Programs. Cybermedia's existing research business currently has a portfolio that includes Dataquest Top 20 IT and BPO surveys, Voice&Data Telecom Services and Equipment Surveys, e-Governance studies, BioTechnology industry surveys, Top BioTech and Tech-schools rankings, among others. The moves comes shortly after a year when CyberMedia run IDC's data on mobile handset sales in India was disputed by handset manufacturers Nokia and Samsung. Is that why, in a company release, Kirk Campbell, President and CEO of IDC, says that "By expanding…
